Sports and pop culture with a Cincinnati flavor.

Menu

Mac’s Cincinnati Reds Throwback Uniform Series: 1935 Edition

Throughout the 2019 season, the Cincinnati Reds will be wearing a series of throwback uniforms to commemorate their 150th Anniversary and being the birthplace of professional baseball. Each weekend during a home series, the Reds will wear the uniforms from a different era to put their rich baseball history on display. Along with the Reds’ celebration, I will be reviewing and providing thoughts on each uniform throughout the season.

The weather forecast isn’t looking that great for tonight’s matchup against the Texas Rangers. In fact, the blah weather is fitting for the blah throwback uniforms.

I hate to say it, but I think we may have taken a step back in the uniforms this time around. Don’t get me wrong.I like simple designs, but 1935’s uniforms they will wear tonight if a game gets played might go a little overboard on the Plain Jane scale. This uniform could be saved with something as simple as a C on the chest or Cincinnati across the front of the jersey. Luckily, this was the last time in Reds history some sort of logo or script wasn’t on the jersey. This looks like a generic baseball player for a company marking something without paying the MLB for licensing rights.

That’s not to say everything is bad about these uniforms though. I’m interested to see how the stripes at the bottom of the pants look and the font is simple and bold enough to be a look I wouldn’t mind moving forward.

Once you get past the fact that the hat kinda looks like a Chicago Bears hat, it’s not too bad either.

The wishbone C is a little thicker than what we’re used to seeing on the hats, but overall it’s not a bad look. I don’t know what it was about the early 1900s, but they sure did love their white hats. Did players not sweat back in the day? You know everything they were wearing was wool or heavy cotton, so I have to think this cream colored hat would’ve been cat-piss yellow by mid-May. I’ve been buying every throwback hat for games that I’ve attended, so I’ll reluctantly buy this one as well. It won’t look bad hanging on my wall, but I don’t know that I’d ever wear it beyond tonight. No matter how cool the 1911 uniforms ended up looking in real life, blue just doesn’t seem right when talking Reds uniforms.

I also have a little bit of a gripe about how the 150th Anniversary bobbleheads are being planned out. Most of the bobbleheads they’re giving away this year are of past players wearing the uniforms they wore during their playing days. Why wouldn’t they match these up with the throwback uniform schedule? The Reds already held Ernie Lombardi bobblehead night (with him wearing the 1939 uniform), but he wore these exact uniforms in 1935. You’ll never hear me complain about a Barry Larkin giveaway, but it seems a little weird that tonight we’re getting a Barry Larkin bobblehead with him wearing the home version of the 1999 uniforms with the black-billed red hat, a uniform combo they’re not even wearing this season (they’re wearing the 1999 alternate combination with the red-billed black had and black undershirt on September 22nd as an homage to the one-game playoff vs. the Mets that we lost when New York comes to town). I am glad they’re honoring the rich history of the Reds and putting all of their past looks and legendary players on display, but the OCD is starting to kick in when I think about how cool it would’ve been to have the bobbleheads line up with the throwback uniforms whenever it was possible. Either that or just have every bobblehead be Barry Larkin wearing the throwback uniforms. That would’ve worked too. Oh well, I’m sure the folks in the marketing department had their reasons. Demand might not have been as high for an early season Bob Bescher bobblehead night. Maybe that’s why they’re getting paid to schedule these things and I pay the internet for the ability to write these things.

Mac’s 150th Anniversary Throwback Rating: 88/150 – 88 might seem like a harsh score, but something as simple as a C on the jersey or a script-Cincinnati across the chest would’ve instantly bumped this into the 110-120s. We already saw plain with the 1912 uniforms and it didn’t look half bad, but for some reason this time around it just looks more like a generic uniform than the way the 1912 uniforms looked like an ancient relic. Maybe it’s because it has a more current wishbone-C than the past uniforms. Either way, it’s what they wore and that’s how they looked in 1935 when they hosted the first night game in Major League Baseball history. Oh, look, another first in baseball coming out of Cincinnati. How about that?